Healthy sections in menus to guide customers
to healthier and more profitable food choices
Self-control as a moderator on the moderating effect of goal to eat healthy on the interaction between healthy section menu to healthy food choice.
University of Groningen
Faculty of Economics and Business MSc. Marketing Management
Introduction
› Obesity is a global health problem
- More than 600 million adults were obese in 2015 - Solution: Shifting consumption to healthy food
› Away-from-home food
- Eating away-from-home become more popular (Binkley, 2006) - Often higher in fat and calories
- Food choice often based on taste, instead of healthiness
Out-of-home setting is a very important domain!
› Menu design influences the food choice
- Guide customers to food choice (E.g., use of symbols)
Introduction
Healthy section on healthy food choice may be moderated by
a person’s:
▪
Goal to eat healthy
- influences a person’s food choice (Selmon et al. 2014) - a healthy food section may remind people to eat healthy
▪
Level of self-control
Conceptual model
Research design
Experiment: Between-subject
- 20 excluded cases, N=143: 97 males and 46 females. - ‘Imagine you have dinner in a restaurant with a friend.’
Healthy section menu Control menu
Results
> Less healthy food choices in healthy section menu
Results
H1 A healthy section on the menu increases healthy food choice. Nonsignificant H2 Goal to eat healthy increases healthy food choice. Nonsignificant H3 Goal to eat healthy strengthens the relation between healthy section
menu and healthy food choice. Nonsignificant H4 Self-control strengthens the relation between goal to eat healthy and
healthy food choice. Nonsignificant H5 The effect of goal to eat healthy on the relation between healthy section
menu on healthy food choice will be stronger when self-control is high. Nonsignificant
Discussion
Theoretical implications:
› Moral licensing phenomenon (Chiou et al., 2011)
› Occasional treat (Kyureghian et al., 2007; Lin et al., 1999)
Practical implications:
› Ignorant about the extent of away-from-home
consumption
Limitations
› Online research instead of a real restaurant
- Less authentic
